Fatal Eggs

The Fatal Eggs (Russian: Роковые яйца, pronounced [rəkɐˈvɨjə ˈjæjtsə]) is a science-fiction novella by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Soviet novelist and playwright whose most famous work is The Master and Margarita. It was written in 1924 and first published in 1925. The book became quite popular, but was much criticised by some Soviet critics as a satire of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the leadership of Soviet Russia.

By 1924, Bulgakov was relatively well known as a writer. He had published several short stories, including Dyavoliada, in some ways a precursor to Master and Margarita, and started publishing his first novel, The White Guard. The Fatal Eggs was finished in early October 1924 and published in the Nedra journal in February 1925; a shortened edition was also published in May–June 1925 in the Krasnaya Panorama journal, under the title The Ray of Life (Russian: Луч жизни). Bulgakov also read the novel on several occasions to various social gatherings, where it met with favorable reception.

The Fatal Eggs can be described as a science fiction novel. Its main protagonist is an aging zoologist, Vladimir Ipat'evich Persikov, a specialist in amphibians. The narration begins in Moscow of 1928, which seems to have overcome the destructive effects of the Russian Civil War and is quite prosperous. After a long period of degradation, research at the Zoological Institute has revived. After leaving his microscope for several hours, Persikov suddenly noticed that the out-of-focus microscope produced a ray of red light; amoeba left under that light showed an impossibly increased rate of binary fission, reproducing at enormous speeds and demonstrating unusual aggression. Later experiments with large cameras — to produce a larger ray — confirmed that the same increased speed of reproduction applied to other organisms, such as frogs, which evolved and produced a next generation within two days. Persikov's invention quickly becomes known to journalists, and eventually to foreign spies and to the GPU, the Soviet secret service. At the same time, the country is affected by an unknown disease in domesticated poultry, which results in a complete extinction of all chickens in the Soviet Russia, with the plague stopping at the borders of the country. A sovkhoz manager Aleksandr Semenovich Rokk (whose name is also a pun on the novel's title, Rok meaning ) receives an official permission to confiscate Persikov's equipment, and use the invention to attempt to restore the chicken populace to the pre-plague level. However, the chicken eggs which are imported from outside the country are, by a mistake, sent to Persikov's laboratory while the reptile eggs destined for the professor end up in the hands of the farmers. As a result, Rokk breeds an enormous quantity of large and overly aggressive snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles which start attacking people. In the panic that follows, Persikov is killed by a mob — which blames him for the appearance of the snakes — and his cameras are smashed. The Red Army attempts to hold the snakes back, but only the coming of sub-zero weather in August—described as a deus ex machina—puts a stop to the snake invasion. In an earlier draft the novel ends with the scene of Moscow's complete destruction by the snakes.